1982: Gabriel García Márquez

March 6, 1927 Aracataca, Colombia-

I’m tickeled pink that we’ve arrived at the Marquez portion of the class; I love his work and La Hojarasca didn’t dissapoint.  The story revolves around the suicide of a doctor, and the memories of the family that has come to bury him.  It takes place in the course of a single afternoon in the fictional town Macondo, but through flashbacks the reader is transported to many different periods of the town’s history. 

Maquez seemlessly switches narradors throughout the story (sometimes so seemlessly that I missed it!), and in their different perspectives the reader is better able to piece together events that have taken place in the life of the dead man.  The Colonel acts as an omniscent narrador, who has witnessed events about which rumours swirl, and is sympathetic to the hated doctor.  Isabel is an observer, but with limited knowledge, and represents the town’s feeling of spite and non-understanding toward him.  The child is an innocent and un-biased however sensitive in an almost supernatural way.  By exploring the thoughts of three narradors Marquez creates a more well-rounded tale.

Time is used cleverly in a variety of ways throughout La Hojarasca.  Times in the day are repeated to suggest the simplicity (and banality) of daily life in Macundo:  The still of the afternoon when eveyone takes a siesta, the meeting of the men at the barbarshop at dusk, the 2:30pm train that passes (but no longer stops).  It is also a trigger of memory, like when the Colonel remebers that the docotr arrived in the town at 2:30 when he heard the train.  Marques also uses months of the year to suggest the passing of time:  Martin’s arrival in December, then July, the March, then July, and that the women start preparing Isabel’s wedding dress in September, and she marries in December.  Additionally, days of the week are randomly used to mark events in the story:  The doctor dies on a Wednesday, Isabel is married on a Monday, Meme and her ruffles at church on a Sunday.

The sense of smell is also an interesting isotopía in the tale.  The child with his keen sense of smell can wander around his home blind-folded, and know who’s room he’s outside of.  At the begining of the book he is unnerved by the smell of trash (death) in the room of the doctor, later on he is visited by the spirit of his dead grandmother as the Jasmine tree “comes-out”, and of course the very end of the story:

“Ahora sentirán el olor.  Ahora todos los alcaravanes se pondrán a cantar”.